Well-Preserved

Babycakes

The Judgment

I cook an awful lot. That said, I don't bake very often, and I don't really do the pioneer-girl DIY thing outside of annual epic batches of preserved lemons, and this is less out of the joy of creation than it is because the store-bought variety tends to taste like lemon Pledge. So anointing a winner between Erin McKenna's vegan cupcake bible, Babycakes, and Well-Preserved, Eugenia Bone's ode to the homemade pantry, is for me the culinary equivalent of judging show dogs or weighing in on the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Luckily for me both books are for beginners, though each approaches the dissemination of its particular art in its own way.

In Well-Preserved, Bone writes — and I mean this as a compliment — like an elementary school teacher. She radiates affection for both her subject matter and her students, coming off equal parts hand-holder, cheerleader, and DIY-pantry role model. She's present throughout, painting herself as a virtuous (though, occasionally, more virtuous than thou) farmers market habitue with the kind of voice that promises that you, too, can throw together effortless, indulgent dinners, if you only follow these canning instructions and stock the larder.

And oh, God, those canning instructions. I'll readily admit to abject terror at the prospect of pressure canning, but there's more here than just that. After all, preserving food can be done in any number of ways: freezable sauces, oil-sealed confits, pickling, the pressure-canning-adjacent water bath. But this isn't just a book of technique: not only are Bone's projects delectable (plans to freeze the saffron-laced zucchini-flower sauce were thwarted by a risotto; at least four batches of her garlicky olive tapenade were made and devoured), but she smartly appends three our four actual recipes onto each preservation project, so once it's November and your asparagus is done pickling you know what the hell it is you're supposed to do with it.

Babycakes couldn't be more different. Gluten-free vegan baking incites a very different fear in me than canning does, largely because while I had previously encountered the ingredients for preserved tuna in my kitchen (tuna, salt, olive oil), I had never encountered xanthan gum, garbanzo-fava flour, coconut oil, or dry soy milk powder. I don't know how these ingredients work. But Babycakes (pastel, retro-tinged, beautifully photographed) promised to teach me all that. It would be easy, the book promised, to inculcate me into the world of celebrity vegan cupake aficionados like Zooey Deschanel and Mary-Louise Parker, who contribute interstitial endorsements of McKenna's New York bakery and its dairy-, egg-, and gluten-free fruits.

As it happens, I've been to the brick-and-mortar Babycakes. To all those folks who declare its cupcake the best in New York, I say to you: quite possibly. It's a killer cupcake by any measure, airy and moist with a giddy sweetness and perfectly creamy frosting — you wouldn't know it was vegan unless someone smugly informed you. But that's the professional version. My attempts at replicating it at home were, to put it mildly, less successful, due in part to maddeningly vague ingredient lists (who knew coconut oil came in both "scented" and "unscented varieties? Or that it needed to melt before being incorporated into the batter?), inconvenient timelines (frosting needs to be started a spontaneity-killing 24 hours ahead; dry soy milk powder had to be ordered online), and surprising expense (all told, I spent close to $100 to whip up a batch of a dozen intensely mediocre cupcakes).

Neither Babycakes nor Well-Preserved is a cookbook for everyday use, and they preach very different gospels to very different congregations. I imagine it is far more likely that more people will consider Babycakes to be a bible — it's well-designed, tied to a hip brand, and so very on-trend — but for sheer functionality, not to mention the edibility of the results, in the matter of the Piglet my vote goes to Well-Preserved.

I sympathize with your challenge trying to replicate the BabyCakes experience. I used to work at a top food magazine, and wanted to run a feature about BabyCakes. Unfortunately, the recipes they sent me tanked in our Test Kitchens and I ended up killing the story. Sounds like they still haven't figured out how to bring their cupcakes home...

I can understand your frustration with the Babycakes cookbook. I'm vegan and cook often with gluten free ingredients. There are techniques that we use often, and are so used to them, they are second nature to us. I've been using the Babycakes recipes since the book has come out, and they do work, but some details have been left out.

Comparing these books really is apples and oranges. Both appeal to a different audience, and frankly anyone who adheres to a gluten-free diet might disagree and think McKenna's recipes are accessible for the everyday.

I happen to preserve and can seasonal bounty, and use traditional baking ingredients, so while Bone's book is more kismetic for me, I would've rather seen the books paired with an equal counterpart.

I've never cooked from "well Preserved" but as someone who has lived gluten free for the last 11 years, anything to bring awareness to alternative baking and make it less intimidating for newbies gets a vote from me. I've been eating at Babycakes for years, and its great that Erin is sharing her recipes.

I admire Eugenia Bone's Well Preserved cookbook so much that I wrote a cookbook review of it earlier this summer:http://www.edibleusable...

I also agree that one of the main strengths of this book is that she includes recipes for ways to use what you preserve. It opened a whole new way of thinking about preserving food for me - that home canning and preserving isn't just about putting up the basics (tomatoes, jam, pickles) but that you can create things that become elements of other meals.

Also, I really like her focus on small batch canning. Growing up and doing quart after quart of tomatoes, beans and corn with my grandmother, I'd always thought of canning as a huge time-consuming process, and that you need a root cellar to store it all in. She shows that it can also be something that you do in a few hours on a weekend and you're left with just a few jars you can stick in your city kitchen cupboard.

I met Eugenia last week and she's just as easy to understand and excited as her book. I already made her zucchini blossom sauce and it was wonderful. She's encouraged me to try the elusive homemade refrigerator bacon!